


If I Knew You Were Coming...

by rabidchild67



Series: Five Times... [21]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Baking, Food Porn, Multi, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Neal's birthday. El and Peter decide to seduce him. With baked goods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Knew You Were Coming...

“Chocolate.”

“Strawberry.”

“Chocolate, hon. Didn’t you see how he practically orgasmed over that mousse at dinner last week?” Peter insisted.

“You only want chocolate because it’s _your_ favorite. I’m telling you, he’s a strawberry shortcake man.”

“And _you’re_ only saying that because you like licking whipped cream off his –“

“We’ll have none of that,” El said, her eyes flashing and cheeks coloring slightly as she grinned. “We’ll just have to agree to disagree on what Neal's birthday cake should be. But seeing as I’m the one who’s going to be baking it –“

“What makes you say that?” Peter interrupted.

“Well, hon, come on, it’s not as if you’ve had much success. I remind you of the [ Great Irish Soda Bread Fiasco](http://rabidchild67.livejournal.com/113096.html).”

“Neal said he liked it,” Peter sniffed.

“Oh, he was being nice, hon,” El said, only a little condescendingly.

“That hurts. You’ve hurt me.”

“You’ll get over it,” she said, patting him on the cheek.

“I’m going to make Neal a chocolate cake,” Peter said with more determination than he felt. 

“Sure thing, hon. Let me know how that works out for you. In the meantime, I’m going to make strawberry shortcakes so we actually have a dessert for the party tonight.” El smiled devilishly and headed for the kitchen while Peter went over to stand in front of the bookshelf where all the cookbooks were kept.

Strike that – between Neal's and El’s extensive collections, the Burke-Caffrey household had two entire _bookcases_ filled with cookbooks. Peter’s mind boggled and his eyes crossed as he took in the vast arrangement – everything from Gourmet Magazine to Good Housekeeping, Julia Child to the Barefoot Contessa. He liked the sound of that last one, and the books in the series seemed on the small side, less intimidating and door-stop-evoking than something called, “Baking Illustrated.” And ooh, look there, a picture of a chocolate cake on the back of the first one he grabbed. 

Learning from the mistakes he’d made last time, Peter grabbed a pencil from his briefcase, settled himself at the dining room table and pored over the recipe while making careful notes in the margins. When he’d read the recipe four or five times, he got up, feeling confident he would forget no detail.

“I thought you were making strawberry shortcakes?” he said to El as he entered the kitchen. She was standing at the sink doing dishes.

“I did, they’re in the oven. I’m just now cleaning up.”

Peter peered around her to the oven, which certainly seemed to be on, and he thought he detected the aroma of _something_ baking. _How did she get it done so fast?_

He went to the refrigerator and opened the door, collecting ingredients. “Hon, do we have more butter?”

“Yes – in the dairy drawer.”

“Sour cream?”

“Top shelf, behind the salsa.”

“Buttermilk?”

“In the door beside the half and half.”

Peter marveled – apparently his wife, who still couldn’t remember which subway line to take to get to his office, had a photographic memory when it came to the contents of their refrigerator.

He next turned to the pantry for the dry ingredients. “Hon, what’s the difference between baking powder and baking soda?”

“It’s in how they leaven the baked goods, and the acidity of the batter. Do you really want a chemistry lesson?”

“No.”

“Does the recipe call for both?”

“Just baking soda.”

“No substitutions, trust me,” she advised, drying her hands on a kitchen towel and heading for the kitchen island to read a magazine.

Peter pulled out the baking soda, two kinds of sugar, flour, cocoa, and salt, then lined them up on the counter according to the step in the recipe he’d need them. Then he went to the cabinets and drawers in search of measuring cups, bowls, and measuring spoons. Finally, he went to retrieve the stand mixer from its spot on the back corner of the kitchen counter, to carry it over to the kitchen island. 

“Oof!” he groaned as he lifted the thing, which may have weighed as much as his wife. Honestly, how did she hump that thing around all the time? Settling it where he wanted, he set about attaching the bowl into its housing. After three tries, he glanced up at Elizabeth who was steadfastly not watching him, then tried again. 

“You want to be sure the little nubbin is situated first,” she pointed out, “then you can lock it in place.”

He nearly scoffed, but when he tried it and it worked, he kept his mouth shut. Next he looked down at the attachments for the mixer. “Hon, is this the paddle thingy?”

“That’s the dough hook.”

He looked at it and it did, indeed, resemble a hook. He held up a wiry thing. “Is this?”

“That’s the whisk.”

“Ah.” Yes, it was, in fact, whisk-like. “So the paddle?”

“Is the only one left.”

He looked down on it – it was broad and flat, and he would allow that it was paddle-like in basic dimensions, but it was mostly open space, with an odd design of interlocking metallic arms or something. He shrugged. 

“You have to twist it on then lock it in place,” El said without his prompting.

“I can _do it_ ,” he muttered, but was thankful for the advice, because there was no way he’d have figured it out in one try. 

Then he went to find the baking pans to butter and flour them. He took some butter from breakfast on his fingertips and thoroughly smeared every square inch of the insides of two round pans. Wiping his hands, he sprinkled flour from the canister – about a cup plopped out, sending up a floury cloud around him. 

“Maybe an apron, hon,” El suggested and pulled out the Sunday Times crossword and a pen. He gave her a dirty look for getting to his crossword first, then went to find an apron. Next he began to shake the buttered baking pans around, to evenly distribute the flour. As he did, he tilted it, and the flour coated the sides as well. “Huh,” he said, proud for having solved a confusing issue himself, but then the flour began to spill out onto the counter top again. 

“Try holding it over the other pan, Hon.”

Peter did as bidden, blinking with confusion at the second pan. There would be too much flour here. “Knock it into the trash can,” El instructed. 

“Oh. Hon, do you do this every time you make a cake?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Seems like a waste of flour – I mean, isn’t that all in the cake too?”

“It’s to make sure the cakes come out of the pans,” she explained.

_To make sure they came out of the pans?_ he thought. _Weren’t they supposed to come out of the pans?_ It seemed like a serious design flaw to Peter.

“Don’t forget to line them with parchment too.”

“What?”

“You trace the bottom of the pans on some parchment paper, cut them out and line the pans with it.”

“Why?”

“To make sure the cakes come out of the pans,” she repeated.

“Don’t they make nonstick pans by now?” he asked.

“Those are nonstick pans.”

“Well then why,” he began, but she was looking at him with her _don’t be simple_ face on and he shut his mouth with an audible click.

It took him ten minutes and three tries to deploy the parchment (“They don’t have to be perfectly round, Peter.” But they did, they _did_ ), and finally he was back on solid ground and doing something he felt more confident doing – making the actual cake. 

“Hon, it says the butter has to be room temperature.”

“Yep.”

“It’s still cold.”

“That’s because that takes a while.”

“Oh. How long?”

“On a day like today? Three, four hours?”

“Oh.”

“You can use the microwave.”

“What?”

“Put the butter in the microwave on low for thirty seconds, it’ll come out just right.”

“Won’t it melt?”

“No.”

“But what if...”

“Trust me.”

It wasn’t as if Peter didn’t trust the cake-making skills of his culinary school-educated wife, but that didn’t sound right. He shrugged and put the sticks of butter on a plate so there wouldn’t be a mess, then set the microwave. “Thirty seconds?”

“Yes. On low.”

“On lowww,” he drawled. When the timer dinged, he opened up the microwave, fully expecting for there to be a puddle of melted goo amid the waxed paper wrappings. But there wasn’t, and the butter was whole, and more or less soft enough to work with. “Huh,” he muttered, and chucked it into the mixing bowl. 

By this time, the timer for El’s shortcakes sounded, and she got up to remove them from the oven. Peter peered over at them – they were perfect, golden brown mounds that glistened slightly from the sparkly sugar she’d sprinkled on top of them. She deftly removed them from the pans to a wire rack and reset the oven temperature for Peter, who didn’t ask how she knew what temperature he would need. She went back to the crossword, clicking the pen as she moved through it.

“Hon, how do you sift stuff?”

“With a sifter.”

“Huh.”

“It’s in the cabinet with the mixing bowls.” 

He went to the cabinet in question and stared into it. There was a pile of bowls and a strange, silver canister-type thing, but nothing that screamed _sifter_ at him. “Hon?”

“The silver, canister-shaped thing, hon.”

He pulled it out and peered inside. Sure enough, the bottom of the thing was made of a fine mesh, with a spring-loaded mechanism in the handle. He pulled at the handle experimentally and an arm at the bottom of the contraption turned in a half circle and sprang back. He supposed that’s how it moved the ingredients around. Settling it over a bowl, he measured in the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt and pulled at the handle; it made surprisingly short work of the sifting, and he found it strangely satisfying.

He slid the sifter into the sink and began to cream the butter with the sugar. This he knew how to do – he’d snuck a few viewings of some cooking shows in since the Great Irish Soda Bread Fiasco and he was confident he could at least manage that. He set a timer for the beating of the butter – exactly 5 minutes, no more, no less. Then he added the eggs.

“Aw, honey, the eggs are bad!” he said, shutting the mixer off and taking a step back, hands on his hips and trying to swallow his disappointment.

“What? No they’re not. If the eggs were bad, you’d know it, believe me.”

“Well, look at this – it looks like someone puked in the bowl!”

“It’s supposed to look like that.”

“You haven’t even looked at it!” 

“Does it look like it’s curdled?”

“Yes. It’s completely ruined!”

“No, it’s not. It’s just that the eggs don’t combine readily with the butter, and it’s not that important at this point – once you begin to add the flour, it’ll all smooth out and homogenize, trust me.”

“Really?”

“I’ve made my share of cakes, hon.”

Peter turned the mixer back on, shaking his head in disappointment, not really seeing how what she was saying could possibly be true. And then he added some of the flour mixture.

“Hon! It smoothed right out!”

“Really? Amazing!”

He ignored her sarcastic tone and continued with the recipe. In the end, the batter came together perfectly and he carefully measured it into the pans, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula until there was barely a smudge of it left. He put them into the oven, set the timer, and sighed with the type of contentment he only felt when he wrapped up a big case.

“Don’t feel too good about it, sport, you’ve got a pile of dishes to do,” El said, heading for the living room to watch some TV.

Peter sighed, but set to doing the dishes happily, still feeling really good about his accomplishment.

\----

When the timer went off, Peter rifled through the cabinets. “Hon!” he called, panicked. “Toothpicks!” He didn’t want the cakes to overcook – he needed to test them NOW. 

“In the junk drawer next to the birthday candles,” she called. El’s junk drawer being as well-organized as the rest of her kitchen, Peter found them with no further difficulties. He removed the cakes from the oven and wished he had a compass so he could find the exact center of the pan and then decided he was being silly. The toothpick nearly disappeared in the cake, however, and it took him a few seconds to try to pull it out with his fingernails without ruining the smooth top of the cake. When it came out clean with only a few crumbs on it, he heaved a sigh of relief and reset the timer so he wouldn’t forget to remove the cakes from the pans to cool. 

It was a close thing getting the cakes out of the pan – maneuvering them and then turning them right-side-up onto a pair of cooling racks was a lesson in patience, and he knew he would never begrudge Neal his constant complaining during a stakeout again. He was about to tackle the frosting when Elizabeth showed up with a printed recipe from the internet and plopped it down in front of him. 

“What’s this?”

“Chocolate frosting recipe.”

“There’s one in the cookbook.”

“This one’s really easy – you only need to use the food processor.”

“Really?” He glanced uncertainly from the cookbook he’d been using and the piece of paper she’d delivered – it hardly seemed sporting. 

“Trust me, the one in the cookbook starts with an Italian meringue and you don’t want to mess with that,” she warned him. 

“But. It’s the one that goes with the cake,” he pointed out. 

“Hon! You can mix and match. Please trust me on this.”

In the end, the frosting did turn out to be insanely easy to make, and he was glad he listened to Elizabeth. 

Now to actually frost the cake. He’d need a cake stand – that he knew where to find! – and thankfully the recipe didn’t call for him to cut the layers in half – not that he would have anyway. He set the first layer on the cake stand, bottom side up as instructed, and spooned a healthy amount of frosting on top. He smoothed it out carefully and set the other layer – bottom side down, and now he had an appreciation for planning ahead, because they seemed to fit perfectly. Then he stood staring at the thing for fully five minutes, wondering how to get the frosting onto the sides.

“Hon!” 

“Yes?”

Peter jumped – she had come up behind him and he hadn’t heard her, so intent was he on the job at hand. She began to pull ingredients for Neal's birthday dinner out of the fridge. It was now 4:30 – where had the entire day gone? Peter gestured at the cake with the dinner knife he held in his hand. “How do I get the frosting all up the sides?” he asked, perplexed.

“Well, for starters, use the right tool.” She went to a drawer and grabbed a long, thin, paddle-shaped knife, the blade of which dropped down at an angle from its handle before stretching out to a length of about ten inches, and handed it to him. 

“What’s this?”

“Offset spatula. It makes spreading things easier.”

“Hon, the rubber thingy on a handle I used to scrape out the bowl of batter…”

“Is a spatula.”

“And the thing you use to turn pancakes…”

“Is also called a spatula,” she answered, her mouth quirking. “Now you’re getting it.”

Peter was still confused, and he was sure his face showed it because she kissed him with a laugh. “So, the angle of the blade there makes it easier to get the frosting on. See?” She demonstrated, scooping some of the frosting out and spreading it expertly on the sides. “But if you really want to make quick work of it, you dump all of it out on the top and slather it down the sides like this, see?” She deftly measured out most of what was left in the bowl and began to smooth it out over the top and down one of the edges.

At that moment, Neal returned home from a matinee at the Metropolitan Opera with Moz. “Aw, Elizabeth, did you make me a chocolate birthday cake?” he asked, kissing her on the cheek appreciatively, then he swept out of the room on his way upstairs to change.

“What?! No!” Peter called after him, but he didn’t seem to hear.

“I’ll give you full credit later, hon,” El said with a smile, then got up on her toes to kiss him again. “I’m so proud of you.” She handed him the offset spatula and went back to prepping dinner.

Peter finished frosting the cake, being careful not to get any onto the cake plate, and slowly smoothed the top and sides out as much as he could. As he finished, he stood back, proud of himself. “Hon, is it this hard to make a cake every time?” he finally asked.

“If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t taste so good,” she pointed out and began to slice strawberries for the shortcakes. 

\----

Before dinner, El recounted to Neal the care with which Peter had baked his cake and Neal, touched, gracefully dropped himself into Peter’s lap and rewarded him with kisses. Then Moz, June, Diana and Christie arrived, and their dinner party was in full swing. 

“So why two desserts?” June wondered aloud after the candles were blown out and the coffee was poured. 

“We had a little disagreement as to what Neal's favorite birthday cake was,” El explained. “And Peter being Peter, he decided to make what he thought was the right thing while I made the shortcakes.”

“So which is your favorite?” Diana asked Neal.

“Whatever anyone makes for me,” Neal said with a grin, tucking into the shortcake in front of him, followed by a taste from his slice of chocolate cake, making appropriate yummy sounds the entire time.

“That is very politic of you,” she replied.

“I love everything my spouses make,” he said truthfully, and changed the subject.

Later, as Diana helped him with the washing up, she asked him again, her voice low, conspiratorial, “Seriously, what’s your favorite cake?” 

“Red Velvet,” he confessed. “But don’t tell anyone. I like to watch them fight over me.”

\----

Thank you for your time.


End file.
